Competitive love

[We adopted a dog (Chloe) that seems to be afraid of me so I try to show her that I love her. Laura wants the dog to like me too but at the same time she wants to be Chloe's favorite, which can lead to some funny exchanges between Laura and the dog.]

Jack (petting the dog): "That's a good doggy."
Laura: "See? He loves you, yes he does."
Laura (whispering to Chloe): "But not as much as I do ... keep that in mind."

True things that are true

[Google often has irresistible desserts and sometimes I will bring a sample home for Laura.]

Jack: I have a treat for you.
Laura: Well, hurry on home.
Jack: This is a really good treat. You'll like this.
Laura: Oh good, I like things that I like.

Cell phone "coverage"

Jack (phoning home from the office): "Sweetie, can you check if I left my cell phone at home? It's probably charging on the counter."
Laura: "Yep, it's here. Oh, let's see if it has any pictures of girls on it..."
Jack: "Ha, ha. Why don't you take some of yourself, dear..."
Laura: "It would take two phones to take my picture..."

[As if the field-of-view of one cell phone camera wasn't big enough.]

Everything's a competition

Laura: "I need a haircut."
Jack: "Yeah, I need a haircut too."
Laura: "I need one worse."
Jack: "This isn't a competition."
Laura: "I know, because I won!"

[I guess you just had to be there...]

A husband's job

[There is a legal phrase used in divorce proceedings, something like "keeping me in the manner to which I have become accustomed". Laura has adopted that phrase with a wishful twist to it.]

Laura: "That's enough teasing for one day."
Jack: "But that's my job!"
Laura: "Well, you need to find another one. Like keeping me in the manner to which I would like to become accustomed."

Queen Laura

[I received a letter from Calvin College addressed to both Laura and me asking for help with fund-raising.]

Jack: "This letter is for you."
Laura: "No it isn't."
Jack: "See, it has your name on it."
Laura: "It doesn't say 'Queen' anywhere."

The shower caste system

[My parents and my sister were visiting from out of town so we had a full house and several of us wanted to take showers one morning.]

Jack [finding Laura just getting out of the shower]: "Oh, there you are."
Laura: "Yeah, I took a long hot shower. I had to do some scraping ... and some chiseling ..."
Jack: "Some 'chiseling', eh?"
Laura: "Well, it's been a while since my last shower..."
Jack: "It's my turn now."
Laura: "There are other people that want to take a shower so don't take too long or we may run out of hot water. I took a long shower but you have to take a short one. We have a 'caste system' here ... and we 'caste' you down!"

Too tired to riot

[The DirectTV satellite service mysteriously erased all our recorded programs (yes, really!) and Laura was understandably upset.]

Laura: "I'm about to start a riot! ... Except I'm too tired. So I'll do it later."

Timezone logic

[We had just returned from a vacation in Hawaii on Sunday night and had to prepare for getting up early Monday morning.]

Laura: "Did you set the alarm?"
Jack: "Yep. 6:50am. Of course, it will feel like 4:50am."
Laura: "You're always bringing up the timezone changes and making it seem a lot worse."
Jack: "I'm not making it worse. I'm just pointing out that our bodies will feel like it is 2 hours earlier because our bodies are still on Hawaii time. So 6:50am will feel like 4:50am."
Laura: "Okay, but only for a couple hours. Then it will feel like 6:50am."

[I can't argue with that.]

Reclining car seats

[Jason, who is 4, surprised me by tilting back his seat in the van into a reclined position. And he did it while sitting in his booster seat!]

Jack: "I didn't know Jason could do that."
Laura [disgruntled]: "Yes, he does that sometimes when we are car-pooling with the Lindemulder kids. But he doesn't seem to know how to straighten his seat back up."
Jack: "So you have to go back there and tilt it back up?"
Laura: "Yes, apparently his job is to make my life harder."

"I Don't Know"

[Laura used to sing a song when she was a kid to bug her brother that she made up called "I don't know". I heard this for the first time recently.]

Jack: "I wonder if my phone is downstairs..."
Laura [singing her song]: "I don't know, I don't know. If you ask me, what I'll tell you is that I don't know."
[Jack just looks at her, surprised.]
Laura: "Go ahead. Ask me something."
Jack: "If you're just going to answer 'I don't know' why would I ask you?"
Laura [singing triumphantly]: "I don't know!"

A tired credit card

[Laura asked to borrow my credit card for some online shopping. Later that evening she returned it to me.]

Jack (feigning surprise): "Oh, I get it back?"
Laura: "Well, it's all tired and worthless now."

Poor Elliot

[Laura and Kim were putting up lights on the Church's Christmas tree and Kim's son Elliot was standing nearby.]

Laura: "You're not putting up very many lights there, Elliot. What are we paying you anyway?"
Elliot: "Nothing!"
Laura: "Well, we'll be decreasing that!"

Take our kids

[We were eating dinner in a booth at IHOP and we repeatedly had to remind our kids to behave, to stop climbing under the table, to quiet their voices, to stop peering over the barrier at other customers, and to stop kicking whatever it was they were kicking.]

Laura (exasperated): "I'm going to be that person who lodges a complaint against this table!"

Then later:

Laura: "I wonder what they would do with such a complaint...maybe move our kids to another table?"

Then later, when I was figuring out the tip:

Laura: "You should give a tip to all the tables around us for putting up with our kids."

Driving commentary

[Laura, who is depth-perception-challenged, cannot stand it when I'm driving through stop-and-go traffic and have to pull in tightly behind another car. I don't brake soon enough for her liking and that leads to a running commentary on my driving.]

Laura (reaching down to slide her seat back as far as it will go): "I'm just trying to get further away from the cars ahead of us."